


No. 31 Whipped (Lancelot)

by Onehelluvapilot



Series: Whumptober 2020 [32]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Lancelot (Merlin), Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Lancelot Whump, Male Friendship, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Whumptober 2020, physical comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27304918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehelluvapilot/pseuds/Onehelluvapilot
Summary: Lancelot's been investigating the case of bodies found whipped to death in the woods when he himself falls victim to the mysterious monster.
Relationships: Elyan & Lancelot (Merlin), Gwaine & Lancelot (Merlin), Lancelot & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Lancelot & Knights of the Round Table (Merlin), Lancelot & Leon (Merlin), Lancelot & Percival (Merlin)
Series: Whumptober 2020 [32]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952440
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	No. 31 Whipped (Lancelot)

**Author's Note:**

> This is it folks! Whumptober Completed!  
> One last thanks to my lovely beta reader @simoneleona! I couldn't have done it without her help and encouragement. And thank you also to anyone who left a kudos or comment!

Lancelot wondered whether the whipping would kill him or if he'd survive it only for the exposure to do him in. The autopsies of the other victims had been about half and half between those two things for the cause of death. He would be the sixth body found. Like the others, he was tied with his arms around a tree, coarse rope wrapped around his wrists and a nail stuck into the tree to keep him standing. Or, more accurately, sagging against the tree halfway upright. The position put all his weight in his arms and he'd long since lost feeling in his fingers from how tight it pulled the rope. 

Another lash fell, this one high up across his shoulders. How many was that? Ten? His back had begun to bleed after just the third. Some of the victims (the ones who had died of blood loss and physical trauma) had up to fifty, the coroner estimated. Evidently, it was hard to tell since they all crisscrossed each other. Lancelot wondered if the victims themselves even knew how many times they'd been hit; after a few more strikes, he lost count of his own. Soon he could only feel the whip because his body rocked with each hit; the pain of the lash was indecipherable from the way his back felt already. 

He didn't know when he lost consciousness, only that it had to have been several hours ago because the moon was high in the sky and the last thing he remembered was utter darkness. It was cold, and his body was blissfully numb. Gaius had frequently told him that not feeling an injury was a bad thing, as a possible indication of shock and/or hypothermia, but right now he was immensely thankful for it. Lancelot knew he was dying anyways; why should he have to suffer before he went?

A part of him cried out in Merlin's voice that he should fight, had to fight, to stay alive, to escape, to make it back home. If he hadn't been so numb, maybe he would have. As it was, it was all he could do to get his feet under him to briefly take some of the pressure off his wrists. He sagged back down soon after, unable to stay standing. Closing his eyes, he prayed that Merlin wouldn't be the one to find his body. Let someone else find him and break the news gently to his friend. It would be devastating either way, but that way it hopefully didn't have to be traumatic as well.

If he had the energy, he would have cried out at the gentle touch of a hand against his head that dragged him back to awareness. Only his friends would touch him like that, and he didn't want them to see him like this. Though he supposed he would rather die in their arms than alone. Someone was on either side of him then, holding him up under the arms.

"Cut him down," Arthur's voice ordered, and he recognized the Man of Letters as one of the two people holding him. Percival was the other, he knew instinctively, and Elyan the one on the other side of the tree quickly sawing against the rope. It snapped abruptly and the men holding Lancelot struggled to guide him gently down to the ground. Leon took Percival's place by his side as the big hunter shifted around to sit in front of the tree and offer his friend something softer than bark to lean against, and after a very painful minute Lance found himself knelt between Percival's legs with his head pressed into his broad chest. He couldn't suppress a moan when his back was jostled, hands clenching in the flannel shirt in front of him, and Percy squeezed his arms comfortingly.

"We need to get him warm," Elyan said.

"Lancelot keeps blankets in his car, and I've got some of those hand warmer pockets," Leon announced. "I'll go back and get them."

Another hand squeezed his arm, and even in his half aware state Lance could recognize it as Gwaine's. "Hey," he said more softly than he had ever before heard from the bawdy hunter. "Can you hear me? What did this to you? I'm going to kill it."

"I don't know," he whispered back. That was almost the worst part. He was supposed to be hunting the monster, and instead it had managed to string him up and torture him without him even getting a glimpse of it.

"That's okay," Gwaine reassured him. "Don't worry about it. I'll deal with it."

"We should have brought Merlin with us," Arthur cursed from behind him. "He'd know what to do here."

"We should call an ambulance," Elyan suggested.

"There's no cell service out here," Percival countered. "And Lance still has that murder warrant out for his arrest from that shapeshifter fiasco, never mind that he hates hospitals anyway."

"So we should get him home," Arthur replied.

"In that case we need to clean and probably stitch his back here." Lance couldn't help a whimper at that idea. "I know, I'm sorry," Elyan agreed, as Gwaine leaned over to press a comforting kiss to his friend's temple. "I'll be as careful as possible, and hopefully only a few places need stitches that can't wait until we get back home." At the bunker, they had painkillers, and Gaius could do smaller sutures that didn't scar up or limit mobility as much.

Leon returned with the blankets and hand warmers, which they arranged carefully around his body. They couldn't cover him completely with a blanket, since Elyan needed to be able to reach his back, but they tucked one around his front and over each of his arms and slipped hand warmers under his arms as well as against his swollen fingers. Ice packs would have been better for the pain where circulation to his fingers had been cut off by the rope around his wrists, but they couldn't risk chilling him further with the way he was already borderline hypothermic. They also heated the water they would use to clean his back over a portable camp stove, which gave Lancelot a few more minutes of reprieve before the pain would start in earnest.

"It's okay, we've got you," Percival reassured the man in his arms as carefully raised his knees to sandwich Lancelot's torso in between them to hold him still, and moved one hand to the back of his neck to hold his head against his chest. When the injured hunter stiffened as Elyan raised a wet cloth to his back to begin washing away the blood, his grip only grew more comfortingly firm. "Shhhh," he soothed at the whimper ripped from Lancelot's throat as the cloth caught on the edge of a particularly deep gash over his right ribs. "I know it hurts, but it'll be alright. We've got you. You're safe." He continued to mutter reassurances as Elyan continued the arduous process of cleaning the wounds with water and then some spirits Gwaine brought over. Lancelot was shaking before long, and not from the cold. Arthur held one of his hands and Leon carefully carded his fingers through his thick hair. 

"Okay. Only a couple of these are still bleeding, so I'll just stitch those and we can bandage the others, alright?" Elyan asked, pausing to squeeze Lancelot's hip with his left hand in a gesture he hoped was comforting. It was hard, since Lance's love/comfort language was touch, but they couldn't hug him due to the state of his back. Elyan tried to rest a hand on his left shoulder, which had mostly escaped the whip, between stitches and whenever he needed to take a second to breathe and make his hands stop shaking. He finally finished stitching the deepest cuts. A few were still bleeding, but they would stop soon with any pressure against them. 

They didn't have enough bandages to wrap his entire torso, so Elyan laid a clean towel over his back before wrapping the blanket around him and then tying that closed with the bandages at the top, bottom, and middle. They left his arms out of the wrap so that they could pull them over their shoulders to carry him back to the car. Lancelot, who was barely conscious at this point, clung instinctively to Percival when they arranged the two of them together in the car. The injured hunter couldn't sit normally with his back against the seat, so he sat in the larger man's lap with his legs to the side and face pressed against the crook of his neck. Strong arms replaced the seatbelt, and Lance, in a brief moment of clarity, decided he didn't mind the pain of touch against his back if it meant he could be warm and alive in his friend's hug.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear what you thought of this work or the series in general! Leave a comment and/or come talk to me on tumblr @gremlinbehaviour


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